by Rich Wandschneider | Feb 27, 2021 | 1491, Patriot Chiefs, Ta-Nehisi Coates
I’ve been on a history reading jag the last few months. It started with a comment I heard from Alvin Josephy many times—that the “standard” histories of America leave Indians out when they don’t lie about them. My first book was These Truths: A History of the United...
by Rich Wandschneider | Jul 10, 2020 | Alvin Josephy, Caribs, Chief Joseph, Columbus, ethnocentricity, George Floyd, Henry Luce, name “Indians”, Navajo Nation, Nez Perce, Patriot Chiefs, Time Magazine
Alvin Josephy passed away almost two decades ago, but time and again, during this coronavirus/Black Lives crisis, I have heard him shout in my ear that when our history books don’t lie about Indians, they ignore them.When the NYT sends a reporter to the Navajo Nation...
by Rich Wandschneider | Jul 10, 2017 | Patriot Chiefs, Randy Lewis, The Right to Be Indian, Western Reads, Western Washington University
As far as I can make out, Seattle Public Library’s “Seattle Reads” program began in 1998 with Russell Banks’ “Sweet Hereafter.” The NEA–National Endowment for the Arts–began the Big Read program in 2006, and Fishtrap and Wallowa County were one of...
by Rich Wandschneider | Jun 28, 2014 | Alvin Josephy, Chester Nez, Code Talker, Navajo, Patriot Chiefs, World War II, WW II in Pacific
The last of the original 29 World War II Navajo code-talkers, Chester Nez, passed just weeks ago at the age of 93. The cruel ironies in his story are many, but the greatest of them haunted Nez to the end: “All those years, telling you not to speak Navajo, and then to...
by Rich Wandschneider | Nov 29, 2013 | Alvin Josephy, Columbian Exchange, Denis Strong, JFK, Patriot Chiefs, Peace Corps, Profiles in Courage, Squanto, Tecumseh, Thanksgiving, Turkey, UCR
It is the end of November in my 72nd year and my mind churns. I guess for many of us of a certain age November will always be associated with John Kennedy’s death. Yes, I remember the day, remember riding my bike to class at UC Riverside, putting it in a rack and...
